In a 1980 article surveying the writing of Newfoundland history,
Peter Neary noted that "Newfoundland history is a very old
subject". (1) The same might be said for Labrador, especially
within the context of general histories of Newfoundland. In his
1980 history of Newfoundland and Labrador, Frederick W. Rowe
followed a well-established convention in the division of his
text into chapters. Thus, out of 26 chapters, Chapter 24 is
entitled "Labrador". Rowe took this approach, he wrote, for
"almost without exception, every Newfoundland historian, trying
to do a general history of Newfoundland, eventually arrived at a
point where a special chapter or section had to be devoted to
Labrador, no matter how hard he had tried to avoid this division
by integrating the story of Labrador with that of the Island."
(2) The Labrador chapter in most general histories of
Newfoundland concentrates on the Labrador fishery and its
importance to the Island of Newfoundland, with tangential
treatment of aboriginal peoples (most especially the Inuit) and
European settlement. (3) Judge Daniel W. Prowse devotes a chapter
to Labrador in his A History of Newfoundland (1895) and provides
one of the first surveys detailing the region's European
"discoverers" (in as much as they were known in 1895), indigenous
peoples, Moravian missions, the Newfoundland fishery, the
Newfoundland Labrador fishery, and Wilfred Grenfell. Prowse's
bibliography also provides a useful list of Labrador-related
literature to 1895. The only general history of Labrador to date
is St. John's businessman W. G. Gosling's Labrador published in
1910 (to be discussed below).

It was only after 1949 that most Newfoundlanders became aware of
Labrador resources other than its fisheries. When the first two
volumes of The Book of Newfoundland were published in 1937,
editor Joseph R. Smallwood included little detailed information
on Labrador. But, when he produced volumes three and four for
publication in 1967, Labrador had achieved greater representation
among the subjects covered, reflecting the emphasis on what
Smallwood once called the "industrial colonization" of Labrador,
since Confederation in 1949. Thus, the volumes contain articles
on the Eskimos (Inuit), Moravian missionaries, Sir Wilfred
Grenfell, and the Labrador Boundary Dispute - all of which had
been subjects of some interest in the 1930s when the Books of
Newfoundland were originally conceived but were ignored in the
1937 volumes - as well as articles on Labrador's potential for
hydro-electric and mineral development. Volumes five and six,
published in 1975, continued Smallwood's emphasis on Labrador
development; they included reminiscences on the "Labrador
Revolution" in mining, reprinted articles about Grenfell as well
as, for instance, excerpts from the diary of Henry Gordon, an
Anglican minister stationed at Cartwright between 1915 and 1925.
(4)

Residents of the Island of Newfoundland have regarded travel to
Labrador as "going down north to Labrador" (or, more precisely,
"the Labrador") rather than the usual geographical convention of
regarding north as being "up". To Newfoundlanders the north has
almost always been perceived as the Labrador portion of the
province. Down north has been regarded alternately as a land of
backwardness and poverty and as the Newfoundland "frontier",
described by Smallwood in The New Newfoundland (1931) as
"Newfoundland's high auxiliary" because of its resource
potential. (5)

In 1927 Newfoundlanders' sense of pride in and ownership of
Labrador had been greatly enhanced when the British Privy Council
defined Newfoundland's territorial jurisdiction over the "Coast
of Labrador", which had been a longstanding (if not particularly
pressing) dispute with Canada. The Labrador Boundary Dispute
highlights the two Newfoundland attitudes towards Labrador. The
first was the determination of Newfoundland to retain control of
Labrador coastal waters, as an abundant harvest for the annual
voyages of fishermen from the Island. The second was the mystique
and promise the interior of Labrador held because of its resource
potential. For non-Newfoundlanders, however, since the mid-19th
century perceptions of Labrador had been drawn from visions
largely of adventure and mystery - a virgin territory for
explorers as well as religious and medical missionaries.

By and large the history of Labrador has not been explicitly
approached by professional historians to 1993. The same can not
be said for social scientists, many of whom have been associated
with Memorial University of Newfoundland. Much of the work to
date is the product of field work by anthropologists,
archaeologists, sociologists and geographers in the past 30
years. The scholarly literature to date emphasizes indigenous
peoples (the Inuit and the Innu), and how they have related with
each other and with external political, economic, social, and
cultural forces. Indeed, what anthropologist Evelyn Plaice has
noted in her 1990 study of Central Labrador is also true of
Labrador history in general - the subject is "complex and
extensive, being influenced by events and changes taking place
much further afield than Central Labrador, and it has not been
exhaustively studied in itself or as part of a more encompassing
project." (6) Labradorians see themselves as distinct from
residents on the island of Newfoundland and proudly defend this
perception.

Physically, the "Newfoundland" part of the Labrador Peninsula is
about 154,000 square km in area and extends "due north from Blanc
Sablon in Quebec to the 52nd parallel of North latitude and then
to extend due west until it takes a meandering course" along the
crest of the watershed of the rivers flowing into the Atlantic
Ocean to Cape Chidley. (7) Labrador consists of four regional
divisions which roughly correspond to the four provincial
electoral districts. The coast of Labrador is bisected by
Groswater Bay and Lake Melville (also known as Hamilton Inlet).
Central Labrador - the district of Naskaupi - may be taken as
comprising the shores of Hamilton Inlet and its drainage basin,
historically the hunting and trapping territory of the Innu and
the metis "settlers". To the north lies mountainous terrain, the
coast deeply indented by a myriad of bays and fiords. The
district of Torngat Mountains is inhabited predominantly by Inuit
- with an enclave of Innu at Davis Inlet and a fairly substantial
settler modulation as well. South of Hamilton Inlet to the Quebec
border, the district of Eagle River was the focus (along with
Groswater Bay) of the migratory fishery out of Newfoundland home
ports and is inhabited chiefly by descendants of fishing families
from the British Isles and Newfoundland. The western interior, or
Menihek, is largely uninhabited, except for the iron ore mining
towns of Labrador City and Wabush and the hydro-electric complex
at Churchill Falls. All three communities were established in the
1960s as company towns.

Because of its variety of indigenous peoples, isolation, and the
preservative qualities of the northern climate, Labrador has
proved fruitful ground for archaeological research. Although much
important work was in progress or remained to be undertaken in
1993 archaeologists have made major strides in outlining the
rough parameters of Labrador prehistory. Over 5,000 years
Labrador has been home to a variety of peoples, including the
Palaeo-Indians, the Palaeo-Eskimos, and the Dorset Eskimos, who
lived there as late as 2,700 to 1,000 Before Present. By 1400
A.D., when regular European contact was initiated, coastal
Labrador was inhabited by the people usually known as Thule
Eskimo, whose Inuit descendants are still the main occupants of
the coast north of Hamilton Inlet. A good introduction to
Labrador prehistory can be found in James Tuck's Newfoundland and
Labrador Prehistory (1976). Tuck and Robert McGee have also
published articles on the prehistory of the southern Labrador
coast in the National Museum of Civilization Mercury Series.
Important work on the northern coast has been done by the
Smithsonian Institute's William Fitzhugh (see the annual
Archaeology in Newfoundland and Labrador a publication of the
Newfoundland Museum.) Fitzhugh's 1972 study provides a good
overview of archaeological work in Labrador from the 1870s.

The Innu - an eastern subgroup of the Cree people formerly known
as the Naskapi-Montagnais - have used the land on a migratory
basis for over 4,500 years. Studies of the Innu that offer
significant Labrador historical background include Georg
Henriksen's Hunters in the Barrens (1973), Peter Armitage's The
Innu (The Naskapi-Montagnais) (1991), and Marie Wadden's
Nitassinan (1991). The Innu have become something of a "hot
button" issue in the 1980s and into the 1990s for their prolonged
protest to low-level military overflights over their traditional
hunting territory. Wadden's recent book looks specifically at the
background and events of the Innu protest and land claims. Inuit
land use and occupancy has been detailed in Our Footprints are
Everywhere (1977), edited by Carol Brice-Bennett and prepared
with the help of several anthropologists and historian James
Hiller for the Labrador Inuit Association as research for its
land claims negotiations.

The first known European contact with Labrador came with Norsemen
from Greenland who visited the area about 1000 A.D. to cut wood,
but presumably did not establish settlements or regular
"stations" (to borrow the Newfoundland usage for seasonally
occupied sites). In the late 15th century Basque and Breton
fishermen came to Labrador to catch cod and whales. At Red Bay a
major whaling station was established, whose existence was
rediscovered in the 1970s by Selma Barkham. The Red Bay site was
extensively explored in the 1980s by Memorial University
archaeologist James Tuck, with federal assistance, and was still
being developed in 1993 - a major archaeological and tourist site
of recognized international significance. In the 1530s French
explorer Jacques Cartier visited the barren southern coast, which
he labelled "the land God allotted to Caine" - an epithet that
has endured to colour many perceptions of the "Big Land".

Thus began over two centuries of French interest in Labrador for
both its fishing and furring potential. Following the end of the
Seven Years' war between France and England in 1763, under the
Treaty of Paris England received possession of Labrador (and New
France) and put the administration of coastal Labrador under the
naval governor for Newfoundland. In 1774 England bowed to the
demands of Quebec mercantile interests and allowed Quebec to
administer Labrador. Because of the problems associated with
Americans fishing illegally off the Labrador coast, in 1807
England returned administrative control of Labrador to the
Newfoundland naval governors (who since 1774 had been in practice
exercising jurisdiction in the area in any case).

British policy towards Labrador in the late 18th century has been
explored by professional historians as well as any aspect of
Labrador history. In 1934 Gordon Rothney prepared a history
masters' thesis for the University of London on Newfoundland and
Labrador in the period 1754-1783; he later expanded this research
for a doctoral dissertation also completed at London in 1939 on
British policy in the North American fisheries from 1775 to 1819.
(8) The question of jurisdiction over the Labrador fishery
received considerable attention in Harold A. Innis' The Cod
Fisheries - the History of an International Economy (1938;
revised 1954), which remains indispensable reading on the
migratory fishery in Labrador. Historian William Whiteley has
written several important articles on early mercantile activities
in Labrador. His well-documented work has appeared in the
Canadian Historical Review, the Newfoundland Quarterly,
Acadiensis, and in a monograph, Duckworth's Newfoundland (1985).
These publications examine the changing Imperial policy towards
the administration of Labrador between 1763 and 1809. His
"Newfoundland, Quebec and the Labrador Merchants" (Newfoundland
Quarterly, Dec. 1977) is as good an introduction to the
beginnings of the relationship between Newfoundland and Labrador
as is available. (9)

To bring Christianity to the Inuit of northern Labrador, in 1771
German Moravians extended their missionary work from Greenland to
Labrador establishing stations at Nain, Okak, and Hopedale.
During the 19th century five more missions were established along
the northern coast with the southernmost Moravian station,
Makkovik, being established to serve Moravian settlers in 1896.
Their work in time brought the Inuit to live in close proximity
of the missions and radically altered their traditional nomadic
lifestyle, as well as helping to protect them from extermination
in further armed conflict with the Innu and the French. As a
consequence it has been observed that the Inuit of Labrador
became "unlike other Inuit in Canada or Alaska", becoming, as
described by Memorial University anthropologist Robert Paine,
"Moravian Eskimos" combining features of German culture with
aspects of Inuit traditional beliefs and folkways. (10)

Accounts of the living and social conditions of the Inuit can be
found in several publications of the Moravians which detailed
their work among the Inuit in Labrador and Greenland. Some
studies have appeared only in German and are indispensable guides
to any understanding of the German Moravian experience in
Labrador.

There is a large body of scholarly literature written about the
Moravian experience in northern Labrador, which makes use of a
wealth of material. Notable work has been done by
anthropologists, whose main concerns have been to understand
Inuit culture before the arrival of the German Moravians and how
the traditional way of life was impacted by the Moravian
missionaries. There are different emphases in Moravian studies -
those which concentrate on the Inuit and those which concentrate
on the Moravians themselves. As a result study of the Moravians
in Labrador is one of the few aspects of Labrador history to have
more-or-less developed distinct schools of thought. The "old
school" emphasized the Christian achievements of the missions and
relied on Moravian and other contemporary accounts; the "new
school" grew out of anthropological field work and was largely
critical of the Moravians' "disregard" for "heathen" Inuit
culture, which had been an intricate and valid response to
northern conditions. Other work has drawn on mission records as
unique and detailed accounts and has credited the Moravians with
substantial achievements, and perhaps with saving the Labrador
Inuit from extinction.

The Moravians have left a rich source of information in the form
of parish records and station diaries. A recent study of the
Moravians notes that "all missionaries were required to report
regularly to their superiors and each superintendent of a
mission, to the Mission Board in Herrnhut. A great deal of
correspondence flowed between the Labrador missions, Herrnhut and
London. A monthly journal, Periodical Accounts, with
contributions and statistics from all over the Moravian mission
field kept missionaries in touch with each other. During its
years of publication (1790-1970), it was one of the most widely
read missionary journals in the English language... The Mission
Board published a similar German-language periodical." (11) Among
the major repositories of records dealing with the Labrador
Moravians are the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
the National Archives of Canada in Ottawa, Memorial University,
the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador at St.
John's, and with the Mission Board in Herrnhut, Germany. There is
also a considerable library of Moravian publications deposited at
McGill University following the closure of several missions along
the Labrador coast. Davena Davis has recently written a useful
bibliographic article on the McGill collection and its importance
to scholars interested in northern Labrador. (12)

Besides looking after the spiritual and medical needs of the
Inuit, some Moravians carried out scientific research as Memorial
University geographer Alan Macpherson points out in a collection
of essays on early scientific developments in Newfoundland and
Labrador.(13) As Memorial University historian Gerhard Bassler
has noted in a recent publication, the Moravians in the 19th
century "collected information about the geography, climate,
flora, fauna, and other natural phenomena, thereby enabling
scholars in Germany to conduct further scientific studies. With
the missionaries help, the renowned entomologist Heinrich Benno
Moschler was able to publish from 1848 to 1870 what was the first
and today still is one of the most comprehensive classifications
of Labrador butterflies. The meterological field work that Prof.
K.R. Koch carried out on a visit to the Nain mission station in
1882 constituted Germany's contribution to the international
polar year of 1882-83." (14) In the twentieth century English
Moravians have added to our general knowledge of Labrador. The
Reverend Walter W. Perrett added a great deal to the study of
northern natural history and was the subject of a biography by
another English Moravian, Samuel King Hutton, (A Shepherd in the
Snow (1936)). Other twentieth century recollections of Moravian
missionary life include a memoir and several other publications
by Hutton, who was a medical missionary in the early years of the
twentieth century and by English Moravian F. William Peacock,
superintendent of the Labrador mission from 1941 to 1971,
especially his memoir, Reflections From a Snowhouse (1986).

From the early 1800s the Labrador fishery became predominantly
Newfoundland-based as Newfoundland fishermen from Conception Bay
went annually to Labrador to fish because of catch shortages in
their own home areas and the pressures of expanding settlement on
the Island. An interesting feature of this new fishery was that
the merchants of St. John's (in the absence of English mercantile
interests, largely occupied by the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars) developed a migratory Labrador fishery that in some
respects parallels the earlier West of England/Newfoundland
fishery. Developments in the 19th century fishery of Labrador
have been explored by Memorial University economic historian
Shannon Ryan. Ryan's work examines the Newfoundland economy in
general during the 19th century, but his writings do discuss the
origins of the Labrador fishery and its overall importance to the
Newfoundland economy. Ryan has also contributed to the Canada's
Visual History Series, published by the National Museum of Man,
with a booklet (and slides) on the "Seal and Labrador Cod
Fisheries" of Newfoundland and Labrador. The relationships
between one Conception Bay community, Brigus, and the Labrador
fishery are explored in a 1988 Memorial University master's
thesis by Robert Lewis. In doctoral studies completed at Memorial
in 1991, Sean Cadigan has examined the social and economic
relationships between 1785 and 1855 between the owners of ships
and the fishermen or servants who worked on the ships sent to the
Labrador fishery.

Recent scholarly research on Labrador history to 1900 can be
found in related entries in the several volumes of the Dictionary
of Canadian Biography. Of particular interest is Volume IV
(published in 1979) which contains articles on some of the
founders of the Moravian mission in Labrador, early converts
among the Inuit and some of the earliest English traders on the
Labrador coast (contributions by historians J.K. Hiller and W.H.
Whiteley). Volumes of the DCB which have been published
subsequently include the geographic index, with Labrador entries
listed as a sub-division under Newfoundland. Short biographical
articles on historical and contemporary figures can also be found
in the Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador Biography (1990),
which includes a geographical index by region and by community.

Twentieth century descriptions of daily life at the Labrador
fishery can be found in a number of the popular histories and
memoirs that are a major component of Newfoundland publishing - although
the
earliest and best account, Nicholas Smith's Fifty-two Years at
the Labrador Fishery (1936), has long been out of print. The
history of 20th century whaling activities by Newfoundland
merchants in Labrador is discussed in several articles by Anthony
Dickinson and Chesley Sanger of Memorial University, a biologist
and geographer respectively.

While patterns of settlement have long been a focus of the
Geography Department at Memorial, work on Labrador has usually
been a sideline to more general studies of historical geography
relating to the fishery. Scholarly studies of settlement in
Labrador include a 1979 doctoral dissertation and several
published articles by Patricia Thornton dealing with settlement
in the Strait of Belle Isle area. Several anthropological works,
including Zimmerly (1975)15, Kennedy (1981) and Plaice (1990)
contain considerable historical information on settlement as
background to their analyses of Innu-settler-Inuit relationships.
Both Plaice's introductory chapter and Kennedy's "Northern
Labrador: an Ethnohistorical Account", (in Paine ed., 1985) are
highly readable capsule treatments of the history of settlement
in Hamilton Inlet and on the north coast respectively.

In the 1830s a new influence on settlement patterns in Labrador
emerged when the Hudson Bay Company established a post at North
West River to buy furs from the Innu and settlers. The life of
one employee of the company has been chronicled in John McLean's
Notes of a Twenty-five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Company
(1849), one of the earliest publications detailing the Labrador
interior. McLean's book, Patrick O'Flaherty, as noted in The Rock
Observed: Studies in the Literature of Newfoundland (1979), was a
"landmark in the history of exploration and one cause of the
aroused scientific curiosity about Labrador" (16) McLean was the
first white man to see the Grand (Churchill) Falls, waterfalls
Joseph Smallwood described nearly a century later as "one of the
wonders of the world" dwarfing Niagara Falls which had about only
half the height of the Grand Fall. (17) The life of Donald Smith
(later Lord Strathacona and governor of the Hudson Bay Company),
who worked for the company from 1848 to 1868 at Rigolet and North
West River and greatly expanded the Company's involvement in
Labrador, is detailed in a biography by Beckles Willson, The Life
of Lord Strathacona and Mount Royal (1915). Most histories of the
Hudson's Bay Company do not deal explicitly with the Company's
operations in Labrador, although the leading role played by Smith
in Hamilton Inlet and later in the direction of the Company has
ensured that they have not been totally ignored.

Another major external influence on Labrador was the English
medical missionary Dr. Wilfred Grenfell who first arrived on the
coast in 1892. Grenfell subsequently established medical stations
along the southern coast, at Hamilton Inlet and on the Great
Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland to minister to both to local
("livyers") and to fishermen who annually prosecuted the
Labrador fishery from schooners and shore stations (known
respectively as "floaters" and "stationers"). The literature on
Grenfell will be discussed below.

Research carried out by the Newfoundland Government for the
Labrador Boundary Dispute provides a rich source of material for
those researching Labrador studies in general, not just the
boundary dispute itself, as Them Days magazine issues and
several anthropological studies (Zimmerly and Plaice are but two
examples) illustrate. (18) Newfoundland politician and journalist
Patrick T. McGrath devoted several years of his "retirement" to
assisting in the preparation of Newfoundland's case for the
judicial reference of the dispute to the British Privy Council
and was dogged in tracking down a wealth of material that has
since been a boon to scholars. This record group is listed as the
P.T. McGrath Collection of private papers at the Provincial
Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador, and includes McGrath's
extensive correspondence, excerpts from the diaries of Hudson Bay
Company posts in Labrador, judicial proceedings from Labrador,
Colonial Office and Admiralty records, Moravian settlement and
missionary work, extracts of "Grenfell's Log" that appeared
periodically in the St. John's press, and affidavits concerning
settlement by Newfoundlanders and livyers in Labrador. Some of
the materials compiled is available in a published form, as
McGrath oversaw its preparation consisting of both printed
documents and atlases for the Privy Council hearings.

Newfoundland governing institutions and political representation
in the colonial legislature were late incoming to Labrador. (19)
With the election in 1946 of a National Convention to select
delegates to determine Newfoundland's constitutional future,
Labrador was represented for the first time in an elected body.
An account of the life of the Labrador delegate, Reverend Lester
Burry, is provided in Hector Swain's Lester Leeward Burry.
Labrador Pastor & Father of Confederation (1983). Following
Newfoundland's confederation with Canada in 1949, Labrador had
its own representation in the House of Assembly although the
successful candidates until the 1960s were primarily residents
from the Island part of the new province, a matter that many
Labradorians still feel strongly about. The experiences of the
Labrador representative from 1951 to 1956 are described in a
chapter of Frederick Rowe's memoir Into the Breach (1988). The
political history of Labrador has yet to be fully explored, in
part because it is so recent, with a possibly fruitful focus of
future studies being the question of Labrador's political
alienation from Newfoundland and the New Labrador Party of the
early 1970s. The history of aboriginal-government relations in
Labrador has been explored in a recent paper by Albert Jones, a
Newfoundland government historian whose speciality is the study
of provincial native land claims. (20)

Since 1949 Labrador has been subject to an accelerated pace of
modernization, dating from the establishment of a major American
air base at the head of Hamilton Inlet in 1941. The early days of
the Goose Bay base have been chronicled in a compilation of
recollections, 'On the Goose' (1987). A brief history of Happy
Valley, the civilian community that sprang up next to the base,
has been written by a pioneer resident, Alice Perrault.
Diplomatic negotiations between Canada, Great Britain and
Newfoundland leading to the establishment of the base are
detailed in David MacKenzie's Inside the Atlantic Triangle (1986)
and Peter Neary's Newfoundland in the North Atlantic World,
1929-1949 (1988). More popular accounts of social relations
between the military base personnel and the local civilian
population can be found in John Cardoulis' A Friendly Invasion:
The American Military in Newfoundland, 1940-1990 (1990) and A
Friendly Invasion Il: A Personal Touch (1993).

In the early 1960s two new towns were created in the western
interior of Labrador when large iron ore deposits were developed
as massive open pit mines. In the late 1960s hydro development
finally started at Churchill Falls (previously known as Hamilton
Falls and, even earlier, as the Grand Falls). Industrial
development led to substantial migration of residents from both
Quebec and Newfoundland to work and live in the western interior.
The story of the mining town of Labrador City has been told in a
corporate history by Richard Geren and Blake McCullogh Cain's
Legacy: The Building of Iron Ore Company of Canada (1990). Social
and industrial relations in Labrador City have also been subject
to a more objective analysis in a 1984 University of Connecticut
doctoral thesis by Jacqueline Driscoll. The origins of the town
of Churchill Falls are dealt with in Philip Smith's Brinco: The
Story of Churchill Falls (1975), a corporate history which
provides some insight into the heady days when the
industrialization of Labrador was the keystone to a sweeping plan
for the economic resurrection of the Province.

One of the inherent dangers in studying Labrador is that the
region was subject to so many missionary endeavours and "grand
plans" that those who actually lived in Labrador year-round can
be easily lost. One of the earliest accounts of life in Labrador
is the published journal of George Cartwright, a former English
army officer who from 1770 to 1786 traded fish and furs from a
base at the mouth of Sandwich Bay (present-day Cartwright).
Published in three volumes in 1792, Cartwright's Journal of
Transactions and Events, during a Residence of Sixteen years on
the Coast of Labrador has been described as the "most famous of
all the books written about Labrador". (21) The Journal provides
invaluable insights into social customs and work relationships in
the early days before English settlement was permanently
established in the area.

Descriptions of life in Labrador during the 19th century can
found in the annual reports British naval officers wrote for the
Newfoundland Government, some of which can be found in the
appendices to the Newfoundland Journal of the House of Assembly.
Other naval officers wrote of their experiences for a wider
public audience. In 1867 British naval officer, William Chimmo,
for instance, published an account of his surveying operations
along the Labrador coast. In 1989 Memorial University English
Professor William Kirwin republished Chimmo's journal and added
an index of names and places. The journal describes Chimmo's
encounters with the Inuit, missionaries, and other residents of
the coast as well as a physical description of the coast. In the
town of Hopedale, Chimmo wrote that "since its foundations
[Hopedale] approaches to near three generations, comprising not
only baptized heathens but these born baptized members grown up
in Christian instruction, which they apply specially for and
enjoy in winter for in summer they must venture on the gains by
which to live." (22)

The best-known account of the daily lives of the settlers is
Lydia Campbell's memoir first published in the St. John's
Evening Herald newspaper in 1894 and 1895 and reprinted by Them
Days magazine as Sketches of Labrador Life in 1980. (23) Campbell
was the daughter of a marriage between an Inuk (singular of
Inuit) and one of the first European settlers at Hamilton Inlet.
Campbell's all-to-brief reminiscences have been frequently
anthologized and the subject of a fair degree of attention from
both residents and academics in a variety of disciplines. While
few memoirs have been written by Labradorians, Campbell's early
effort has been a contributing factor in encouraging several
settler women to set down reminiscences. Campbell's daughter,
Margaret Baikie, has had a brief memoir published by Them Days;
Elizabeth Goudie's Woman of Labrador (1973), published at the
instigation of anthropologist David Zimmerly, has inspired
another generation of Labrador women and yet another Campbell
descendent, Grenfell nurse Millicent Blake Loder, had her
Daughter of Labrador published in 1989. In addition Doris
Saunders, editor of Them Days magazine since 1975, has been
active in gathering oral history and genealogical information
from settler women. (24) There has also been a book-length
biography of one Labrador woman, the Innu elder Peenamin McKenzie
(or Penamee), Marcel Mongeau's Mishta Pinamen: Philomene, la
Formidable (1981). Women's history in Labrador would appear a
rewarding area for further study in the near future.

Contemporary accounts of social and economic conditions in early
20th century Labrador were often undertaken by visitors from
Newfoundland and concentrate on the areas of the coast frequented
by fishermen from Newfoundland. Wider in scope are the detailed
reports written by Newfoundland Governor William MacGregor after
visits to Labrador in 1905 and in 1908. (Both were published in
the appendices of the Newfoundland Journal of the House of
Assembly.) The Newfoundland Government and local churches also
sent medical missionaries to Labrador to look after both the
spiritual and physical needs of Newfoundland fishermen. One such
missionary was Patrick W. Browne, who later taught history at the
Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Browne wrote
of his Labrador experiences in a book entitled Where the Fishers
Go (1909). He did not "claim for it the title of history; it is
merely a little literary fabric woven from facts and experiences,
during the leisure moments of a busy ministerial life." (25)
Browne provides some useful analysis of social and economic
relations between merchant and fishermen as background to
understanding the fishermen - and their dependents who risked
their lives in travelling to and from Labrador. He also recorded
considerable detail on the social and economic conditions of
various Labrador coastal communities, the fisheries, the trading
activities of the Hudson Bay Company, the Innu and Inuit,
Newfoundland missionaries on the coast, Moravian missionaries,
and Dr. Wilfred Grenfell.

Both MacGregor and Browne, in part, took their interest in
Labrador because of the heightened profile caused by the
activities of Dr. Grenfell. (Although both were also attracted by
Labrador for personal reasons - Browne was the son of a Labrador
skipper and MacGregor was himself a physician, with a special
interest in the treatment of tuberculosis.) The only
comprehensive history of Labrador to date was inspired more
directly by Grenfell. St. John's merchant William Gilbert Gosling
had long been interested in Newfoundland history and in the early
1900s, along with Daniel Prowse, had helped to revive the
Newfoundland Historical Society. His interest in Labrador was
prompted by a personal friendship with Grenfell. Gosling's wife
later recalled that "Gilbert had felt a growing interest in
Labrador for some time which was stimulated by Dr. Grenfell's
splendid missionary work there, and his descriptions of his
adventures along that bleak and barren coast." (26) As he wrote
in his preface to Labrador (1910), Gosling had commenced his book
at the suggestion of his friend and had "long been collecting
books relating to the history of Newfoundland, and fondly
imagined that I had the few chapters that would contain all that
was known about Labrador." Initially, Gosling had only intended
to write a chapter on Labrador history for a book that Grenfell
was editing for publication. However, his researches took him to
the relevant government records in British and Canadian archives,
as well as to the Newfoundland Government records. Among the
major subjects discussed in his history are the origins of
European contacts with Labrador, 18th century French interests in
Labrador, the Moravian missions, George Cartwright's trading
activities, American fishing interests, the Newfoundland Labrador
fishery, the Newfoundland-Labrador boundary dispute, and (of
course) Dr. Wilfred Grenfell. Gosling's research later played an
important role in helping Newfoundland formulate its arguments in
the preparation of its case in the dispute with Canada over the
ownership of Labrador. His wife later wrote a book about the work
of the International Grenfell Association, but in finding the
Grenfell Mission a worthy subject Armine Gosling was far from
being alone.

In The Rock Observed Patrick O'Flaherty observed that in the
second half of the 19th century "Newfoundland and Labrador became
an object of scientific, romantic, and humanitarian interest
among foreign writers". (27) Many of these later published their
findings and observations - A.S. Packard, The Labrador Coast
(1891); University of Toronto Professor of Chemistry and Botany
H.Y. Hind, Explorations in the Interior of the Labrador Peninsula
2 vols (1863); W.A. Stearns, Labrador: a Sketch of its Peoples,
its Industries and its Natural History (1884); Randle F. Holme, A
Journal to the Interior of Labrador; July to October 1887 (1888);
Henry G. Bryant, A Journey to the Grand Falls of Labrador (1892)
and Canadian geological surveyor A.P. Low's Report on
Explorations of the Labrador Peninsula (1896). The Rock Observed
is a necessary introduction to these published accounts of
Labrador. Another highly readable study of this literature which
provides some excerpts on Labrador is Gordon Moyles' 'Complaints
is many and various, but the odd Divil likes it'. Nineteenth
Century Views of Newfoundland (1975).

Adventurers and scientists had still only roughed out the map of
Labrador by the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, it
was partly over-reliance on Low's map that led explorer Leonidas
Hubbard to his death in 1903. Hubbard's companion, Dillon
Wallace, later published an account of the expedition, The Lure
of the Labrador Wild (1905), which became a best-seller.
Hubbard's wife and Wallace later completed the journey overland
from Hamilton Inlet to Ungava Bay in separate (but simultaneous)
journeys in 1905. Neither Mina Hubbard's, A Women's Way Through
Unknown Labrador (1908) nor Wallace's The Long Labrador Trail
(1907) mentions the other expedition. (28) J.W. Davidson and John
Rugge's, Great Heart (1988) - an account of all three expeditions
- employs considerable literary license in combining the three
above-named accounts, but is nonetheless laudably accurate.

The public's fascination with Labrador was further encouraged by
the medical missionary work of Grenfell, who from the 1890s
actively promoted his work and wrote widely on Labrador. In 1909
he edited a book entitled Labrador: the County and the People -
which provided the original impetus for Gosling's Labrador.
Grenfell lectured extensively throughout North America and Great
Britain making the social, economic and medical problems of the
Labrador well-known to a sympathetic public. His writings dealt
with his exploits and activities in Labrador, all part of his
strategy to generate publicity and funds for his medical mission.

Ronald Rompkey of Memorial's English Department, which has a
strong tradition in the writing of Newfoundland cultural history,
has recently published a thorough and first-rate biographical
treatment of Grenfell. His Grenfell of Labrador (1991) draws upon
previously unused archival sources in portraying the society and
culture to which Grenfell was first drawn in 1892 and which he
loyally served for nearly 50 years. There is a rich collection of
private manuscripts belonging to Grenfell and his associates
available in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.
Indeed, Rompkey's bibliography of published and unpublished
sources stands as an indispensable guide for anyone interested in
studying early 20th century Labrador. It also contains a listing
of Grenfell's published books and articles. Extensive records of
the International Grenfell Association, set up by Grenfell to
administer to the medical needs of local residents, are available
at the Provincial Archives in St. John's. (29)

In addition to his own substantial body of writings, Grenfell
also had his admirers, who wrote about him and Labrador (usually
in that order) in an astounding variety of publications. (30) The
previously mentioned book by Patrick W. Browne and Patrick T.
McGrath's Newfoundland in 1911 included praiseworthy sections on
Grenfell. Canadian journalist and novelist Norman Duncan in the
early l900s wrote Doctor Luke of Labrador (1904) and Dr.
Grenfell's Parish (1905) as tributes to Grenfell. (31) Another
admirer was Elliott Merrick who went to Labrador as a volunteer
worker for the Grenfell Association and later wrote several books
on Labrador, including True North (1933) and Northern Nurse
(1942). The first book is an account of Merrick and his wife's
trip to the interior, while the latter is an "autobiography" of
his wife, a Grenfell Association nurse. Merrick's short fiction
has been published in a 1992 collection, The Long Crossing and
other Labrador Tales, with an introduction by Ronald Rompkey.
Rompkey is currently editing for publication the journal and
photographs of British doctor and archaeologist Eliot Curwen, who
accompanied Wilfred Grenfell to Labrador in 1893. Gilbert
Gosling's wife, Armine, in 1924 published an account of the
International Grenfell Association and the amount of journalism
on Dr. Grenfell is quite overwhelming. Beginning in 1903 the
International Grenfell Association produced its own magazine
Among the Deep Sea Fishers which also contains general articles
about Labrador. Patricia O'Brien's The Grenfell Obsession (1992),
a recent anthology of previously published articles and
photographs, richly documents the history of both Grenfell and
the Association in honour of the centenary in 1992 of Grenfell's
first visit to Labrador.

Finnish Geographer Vaino Tanner's study of Labrador contains a
wealth of information. His Outlines of the Geography, Life and
Customs of Newfoundland-Labrador (1944) may have originally been
intended to be of primary interest to geographers, but travel in
Labrador in the late 1930s was (and remains to some extent) quite
an involved process. Like many other social scientists that came
after him, Tanner spent so much time in the company of Labrador
residents simply getting from point A to point B that his work
contains the perhaps unexpected bonus of quite perceptive
observations about the people and their daily lives. Tanner
collected enough varied information to make his work an
indispensable source for understanding Labrador in the 1930s.

The indigenous peoples of Labrador have also been studied by
geographers and anthropologists at McGill University in Montreal.
(32) In 1965 Diamond Jenness published the third study in a
series he had completed for the Canadian Government on Eskimo
administration in the North American Arctic, the first two being
examinations of Alaska (1962) and the Canadian Arctic (1964).
Jenness divided his study into three administrative periods:
Moravian rule 1771-1914; 1914-1949 when Moravian influence gave
way to that of the Newfoundland Government and the Hudson Bay
Company; and the post-1949 period under Confederation with
Canada. A good introduction to the history of the region,
Jenness' study is a sympathetic examination of the Moravian
record and their efforts to protect the Inuit from the excesses
of the white man's culture. Another invaluable study of the Inuit
appeared in 1966, Helge Klievan's The Eskimos of Northeast
Labrador: A History of Eskimo-White Relations.

The Jenness and Klievan studies coincided with Memorial
University's growing interest in the indigenous cultures of
Labrador. Following the establishment in 1961 of the Institute of
Social and Economic Research (ISER) at Memorial University, the
University became involved in the study of the Inuit. In 1962 one
of ISER's first research fellows, Shmuel Ben-Dor lived in
Makkovik for a year to examine Inuit-settler relations. In the
late 1950s Inuit from Hebron and Nutak, where the Moravians had
closed mission stations, were resettled to Makkovik. Ben-Dor
found that their "two cultures co-exist with very little
interaction except for that caused by an overarching
administrative structure." (33)

His conclusion that "there is little doubt that the settler mode
will eventually triumph in Northern Labrador although it is
impossible to predict how and when," (34) provided the
opportunity for ISER research fellow John Kennedy to re-examine
Makkovik's ethnic relations a decade later. Kennedy's research
showed that the Inuit culture had resisted assimilation by
settler culture and was strong enough to remain distinct. (35)

In 1965 British anthropologist Robert Paine came to Memorial and
launched ISER on an ambitious study of the Canadian Arctic. ISER
Director Paine had previously taught at the University of Bergen,
where he studied the Sammi (Lapps) of northern Norway. ISER also
sponsored graduate work by historian James Hiller, who completed
a 1967 master's thesis on the origins and early years of the
Moravian missionaries in Labrador from 1752 to 1805. In 1968 ISER
received a major research grant from the Isaak Walton Killam
Awards to study the East Arctic. The grant enabled research
already in progress to be concluded (for instance, Henriksen's
study of the Naskapi) and for new studies to be undertaken on the
Northwest Territories and Baffin Island. (36)

Growing disenchantment with the provincial political process in
Labrador (and the electoral success of the New Labrador Party)
convinced the new Provincial government in October 1972 to
appoint a Royal Commission of Inquiry to examine the "economic
and sociological conditions of life in Labrador" (see William A.
Fowler, "The Growth of Political Conscience in Labrador."
Newfoundland Quarterly (1976)). The Commission was chaired by
Donald Snowden, Director of Extension at Memorial University and
previously employed with the federal Department of Northern
Affairs and Natural Resources from 1956 to 1964. Snowden's
collection of personal notebooks dealing with the work of this
Commission are on deposit at the National Archives of Canada (as
collection MG 31, D 163). The six-volume report released in 1974
contains much information on the social services, natural
resources, government services, and peoples of Labrador.

Along with the work carried out by ISER, in 1979 Memorial
University's interest in academic studies on Labrador was further
enhanced through the establishment of the Labrador Institute for
Northern Studies. Its mandate is to encourage, coordinate and
support major University projects or programmes designed to
enhance the general knowledge of Labrador and to promote the
general well-being of its people.

The flowering of scholarly interest in Labrador in the early
1970s, as well as a growing political consciousness, contributed
to a growing interest in preserving accounts of a vanishing way
of life in Labrador. In 1973 the Labrador Heritage Society was
founded and two years later the Society sponsored a booklet
collecting Labrador oral history, edited by Doris Saunders. Them
Days has since become a quarterly magazine and nothing less than
a Labrador institution. The interviews, genealogical information,
reprints and documents published by Them Days have helped to
shape the consciousness of Labradorians (the majority of whom by
the 1970s were "newcomers" from Newfoundland and elsewhere) and
impressed on many the necessity of writing their own history.
Particularly well-represented in Them Days have been the
settlers, while other groups (perhaps with the notable exception
of the Innu) have also contributed a wealth of material to the
magazine. Another important collection of "the people's history",
backed by the federal government and published by the Labrador
Institute of Northern Studies, is Lawrence Jackson ed., Bounty of
a Barren Coast (1982). With the growth of local (Newfoundland)
publishing and encouraged by the popularity of Them Days -
several memoirs by Labradorians have also appeared since the
mid-1980s, including Horace Goudie Trails to Remember (1991),
Millicent Blake Loder's Daughter of Labrador (1989), Harold
Paddon's Green Woods, Blue Waters (1989), W. Anthony Paddon's
Labrador Doctor (1989), George Poole's A Lifetime Listening to
the Waves (1988), and Benjamin Powell's Labrador by Choice
(1984).

The writing of their own history by the "real Labradorians" has
also had an impact on a "second wave" of social sciences
research, concentrating on relationships between ethnic groups
and the impact of modernization, rather than chronicling
traditional ways of life. The increasingly touchy subject of
ethnic politics and land claims in Labrador, as well as some of
the recent trends in Labrador studies, are illuminated by John C.
Kennedy's article "The Changing significance of Labrador settler
ethnicity" (Canadian Ethnic Studies vol. 20, 1988).

Despite the rich sources available, in terms of a historical
survey there is still no substitute for Gosling's Labrador,
published nearly a century ago. Despite the number of scholars
working in the field (or on its periphery) there is no published
comprehensive history of the Moravian missionary experience in
Labrador. Nor is there any extensive analysis of the work of the
Hudson Bay Company in Labrador. Studies of economic and social
relations by professional historians at Memorial University of
Labrador history at the community level are just beginning to
emerge; in an examination of Battle Harbour sponsored by the
Labrador Institute of Northern Studies, Sean Cadigan has examined
how the credit system worked between fisherman and merchant and
how the decline of that system by the late 1920s led to the rise
of government relief after 1929. (37) Historian Gerhard Bassler
is exploring the German cultural record among the Inuit in the
19th and early 20th centuries. James Hiller is writing a
monograph on the establishment and early years of the Moravian
mission in Labrador from 1752 to 1805. Other historical
researchers are active in other academic disciplines at the
university. Religious Studies professor Hans Rollmann of Memorial
University is preparing a biographical dictionary of all Moravian
missionaries from 1752 to the present. He is also preparing a
monograph on the 1752 voyage of exploration by Moravians to
Labrador, which resulted in the death of Johan Christian Erhardt
and several of his crew. The monograph will include a translation
of Erhardt's diary and other relevant documents dealing with the
voyage. Marcella Rollmann (Department of German and Russian
Language and Literature) is examining language and communication
in the early Moravian missions to Labrador. (38)

Memorial anthropologist John Kennedy, one of the most active
scholars in Labrador studies, is also working on a book-length
study of southeastern Labrador (Chateau to Sandwich Bay).
Individual community histories can also be found in the published
volumes of the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador. Much of
the latest scholarly research on Labrador has been incorporated
in a number of survey articles in volume three of the
Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador (1991). Major articles
on Labrador issues in the volume include "Hudson's Bay Company",
"Innu" by Adrian Tanner, "Inuit" by John Kennedy, a historical
survey ("Labrador"), "Labrador Boundary Dispute" by Leslie
Harris, "Labrador Fishery", and "Moravian Church" by Davena
Davis.

There are several useful published bibliographies on Labrador
literature. In addition to those already cited in the works of
Prowse and Tanner, for instance, there are Alan Cooke and Fabien
Caron's two-volume 1968 publication Bibliography of the
Quebec-Labrador Peninsula and Agnes O'Dea and Anne Alexander's
Bibliography of Newfoundland published in 1986, the latter being
the definitive bibliography on Newfoundland and Labrador. Anyone
interested in researching Labrador archival sources should begin
with Richard Budgel's A Survey of Labrador Material in
Newfoundland & Labrador Archives completed in 1985 for the
Labrador Institute of Northern Studies. Budgel's guide is
organized according to the holdings of the province's major
archival repositories, which also have inventories to their
general holdings. The archives of Them Days located in Happy
Valley contain considerable material on Labrador, including
diaries, photographs, private papers, and oral interviews
collected in the last 15 years.

NOTES

1. Peter Neary, "The Writing of Newfoundland History: An
Introductory Survey." In James Hiller and Peter Neary, eds.
Newfoundland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: essays in
interpretation Toronto 1980, 3.

2. Frederick W. Rowe, A History of Newfoundland and Labrador
Toronto 1980, 465.

4. Joseph R. Smallwood, ed. The Book of Newfoundland. 6 vols.,
St. John's 1937-75. In 1972 Gordon's journal of his ministry in
Labrador, from 1915 to 1925, was published by the Provincial
Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. See Henry Gordon. The
Labrador Parson. Journal of the Reverend Henry Gordon. Ed. by F.
Burnham Gill, St. John's 1972. Gordon's journal includes
information on the Spanish influenza epidemic which affected the
Labrador coast in 1918; that epidemic is also discussed in Eileen
Pettigrew's The Silent Enemy: Canada and the Deadly Flu of 1918
(1983). The March 1986 issue of Them Days magazine is devoted to
the town of Okak and the effects of the Spanish Influenza
epidemic of 1918. At Okak only 59 people out of a population of
220 survived the epidemic.

7. The historical description that follows is from the
Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador Vol. 3, St. John's
1991, 203-16.

8. Gordon O. Rothney, "The History of Newfoundland and Labrador,
1754-1783." Unpublished M.A. thesis, University of London, 1934,
and 'British Policy in the North American cod-fisheries, with
special reference to foreign competition, 1775-1819.' Unpublished
Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1939.

9. Whiteley's uncle, Albert Whiteley, has written of his family's
historic business connections on the Quebec Lower Shore and with
Labrador and Newfoundland in a book published in 1977 on Bonne
Esperance. See Albert S. Whiteley, A Century in Bonne Esperance.
The Saga of the Whiteley Family Ottawa 1977. Newfoundland
connections to the Lower North Shore are also examined in Frank
W. Remiggi, "Ethnic Diversity and Settler Location on the Eastern
Lower North Shore of Quebec." In John J. Mannion's The Peopling
of Newfoundland. Essays in Historical Geography, St. John's 1977,
184-211.

1O. Sandra Gwyn, "Labrador on the brink of the future. Fresh
voices in the land God gave to Cain." Saturday Night vol. 93, no.
10 (December 1978):18.

12. Davena Davis, "The Gardens of the Lord: A Description of the
Moravian Church in Labrador, and the Lande Collection, entitled
`The Moravian Missions to the Eskimos of Labrador'" Fontanus vol
II (1989):27-36.

18.The material collected in the 1920s by Patrick T. McGrath for
the Newfoundland Government was inventoried by Melvin Baker in
1973 for the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador. An
inventory of approximately 200 pages in length is available at
the Archives in Manuscript Record Group P4/17.

20. Albert Jones, "Emergence of Aboriginal-government Relations
in Newfoundland and Labrador," in John D. Jacobs and William A.
Montevecchi, eds., Common Ground: Northern Peoples and the
Environment ISER Conference Papers No. 4, St. John's 1993, 57-72.

22. William Chimmo, William Chimmo's Journal of a Voyage to the
N.E. Coast of Labrador during the Year 1867. Ed. by William J.
Kirwin. St. John's 1989, 47-8.

23. Roberta Buchanan, "'Country Ways and Fashions': Lydia
Campbell's "Sketches of Labrador Life", A Study in Folklore and
Literature." In Gerald Thomas and J.D.A. Widdowson, eds. Studies
in Newfoundland Folklore: Community and Process St. John's 1991,
290. Campbell had been encouraged to write her memoirs by the
Reverend Arthur Waghorne, an Anglican missionary stationed in
Labrador from 1891 to 1894. Waghorne was also interested in
Labrador folklore and published two articles on Newfoundland and
Labrador folklore customs and traditions.

24. Elizabeth Goudie's husband was, in fact, also a descendent
of Campbell. One of the pleasures of studying Labrador at the
community level is that, historically, the population has been so
small (less than 5000 people at the time of Confederation in
1949) that individuals stand out and that the researcher
frequently will find that interesting figures are related, or
mentioned in each other's writings.

25. Patrick W. Browne, Where the Fishers Go, the Story of
Labrador. Halifax 1909, viii.

26. Armine Gosling, William Gilbert Gosling, a Tribute by A.N.G.
New York c1935, 49.

27. O'Flaherty, The Rock Observed, 82.

28. Ibid., 102-110 for a detailed examination of these travel
writers attracted by the "Lure of the North."